My last blog was concerning the Exchanged Life. I talked a little about what the exchange is, and that we tend to have so much trouble with the Christian life because we are trying to change our old man, or old soul into a new creation instead of just cashing in our old soul for the new one Jesus gave us on the cross. The band Leeland has a song and the chorus just says, "I am a new creation, I have been born again." Do we really believe that, though? Do we truly understand that we have been born again, and that we truly ARE a new creation? Galatians says that we have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer us who live, but Christ lives in us. The life we now live, we live by faith in the Son of God. So what does that mean? That means that when Christ was crucified on the cross our old man was crucified with Him, and that when He rose from the dead, our new man was raised to life!
The reason I am writing this blog today is to help those of you who are new to this teaching understand how to appropriate this exchange. I would assume that those of you who are reading this do know Christ as your personal Lord and savior. If you don't, then trying to do this and trying to live in the new man will be impossible. So if you don't have a faith in Jesus as your Savior then I would suggest that before you read any further you take a few minutes to get that settled in your heart. If you try to work this principle out in the flesh you will continue to be defeated and satan will have a great time taking you out of the ball game. You can't work out a spiritual principle in the flesh. So the first step in appropriating the exchange is to understand and to recognize that once you come into faith in Jesus you are now a new creation. You must understand that there are 2 natures. There's an old sinful nature, and a new spiritual nature. Once you recognize and realize that, it will make everything else much easier.
The next step is to recognize what things are in the old soul and what things are in the new soul. To find this out we will look at Galatians 5:19-23 It says, "the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like: of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God."
So the works of the flesh are very evident. It's not hard to point out what kinds of things are in the old soul, but when we make the exchange we will be able to recognize when we are slipping into the things that are part of the old nature. I underlined "and the like" in that verse. Paul couldn't possibly list every single bad thing that you could ever do, so he just threw "and the like" in there so he could make sure all of his bases were covered. Anything that runs around with that list of things is also applied to that list.
The next 2 verses describe what kind of things are in the new soul and the new nature. Verses 22 and 23 state, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.".
The fruits of the Spirit are not hard to see either. It even says, against such there is no law. When's the last time you saw a wife call the police on her husband because he was just too faithful to her? Have you ever seen anyone just fly off the handle because you were kind to them? If you have it's probably because they are operating in the old soul. In my 23 years of life, I've never seen anyone taken to court because they were just too dad gum patient with someone! I've never heard a parent tell their child, "You need to start losing control more often! You have WAY too much self-control for your own good!" All of these scenarios would be ludicrous.
So we see the difference between the old and the new soul in black and white print, and we think that the fruits of the Spirit are just things that on a good day we will be able to work out occasionally. We've accepted the fact that Christians live life stuck somewhere in the middle and that's just as good as it will get. Well I am here to tell you today that the "normal Christian life" is nowhere near where normal is supposed to be. We have embraced the sinfulness that is in our lives as normal. That is NOT normal! My pastor and mentor Wayne Kniffen says that most believers are so subnormal, that if they ever got normal, they would appear abnormal.
Romans 12:1-2 talks about becoming a living sacrifice and transforming your mind. For a unique look at these scriptures check out the 1_2 blog at justinashcraft.wordpress.com
Romans 12:1 says to make our lives a living sacrifice. That means just giving up every single aspect of our lives and allowing God to take over every facet of who we are and what we do. He wants a living sacrifice, because a living sacrifice chooses to stay on the altar. A dead sacrifice has no choice in the matter. What we have done in our lives, though, is we'll crawl up on the altar for a little while, then mess up and fall off. Then we feel like we have to go to church more, read more bible, pray more, and ask God to make us better people. I'm not saying that church, the bible, and prayer are bad. What I am saying, is that we revert to trying to change the old man into the new man and pray that God will just turn us into better versions of who we used to be. Can I tell you that it just will not happen that way! It's like trying to turn a telephone pole into a tree! So when we fall off the altar what do we do? Fess up, get up, and crawl back on the altar. Then we may fall off again later on. What do we do? Fess up, get up, and crawl back on the altar! We don't have to keep beating ourselves up and walking through life downtrodden and discouraged having no joy. Verse 2 of Romans 12 tells us that we are not to be conformed to the ways of this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. I feel like if we continually allow God to transform our mind, that staying on the altar will be much much easier. The greatest battle that we as believers face is the battle that rages in our minds! If the devil can get a hold of our thoughts then he can wreak havoc on our lives! My pastor says it like this, "Sow a thought: Reap a word. Sow a word: Reap an action. Sow an action: Reap a habit. Sow a habit: Reap a destiny." If satan can get a hold of our thoughts, he can ultimately screw up our destiny. So we have to continually go through the day and allow God to renew and transform our mindset and our ways of thinking about certain topics and subjects.
So as we walk through and start grasping a better understanding of the exchange and what took place on the cross, it will make it easier to actually make the exchange and live in the new soul. Jesus took our place on the cross so we wouldn't have to. In fact He became what we were, so we could be what He is! 1 John 4:17 says, "...as He is, so are we (now) in the world!" How cool is that?!? The character that Jesus had, the mindset He had, the way He lived...that's available to us in this day! How? By making the exchange! When we see this it makes things like 1 John 3:9 understandable. "Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God." This is speaking directly of the new soul and it's appropriation in our lives. Some people see that and they just check out. They have the mindset of "well, there's no way that I have been born of God because I definitely still sin." When we are in the new soul, the new soul can't sin! It's the old soul, and the old works of the flesh that keep us defeated! When we are in the new soul we CAN NOT and WILL NOT sin! It's a great thing when you truly grab hold of it! I pray that this will help you to recognize when you are slipping back into the old habits and routines that were formed in the former life, and that it will help you to correct those things before you are too far gone to do anything about it. As you go through the week continually ask God to renew your mind and constantly remind yourself, "I am a new creation, the old things have passed away and only the new remains!" Remember the old man can never live the new life, and the new man can't survive in the old life. God bless, and have a great week!
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
My First Blog-Exchange
So this is my first blog on my site. I have been wanting to create a blog for some time, and I just decided that today seemed like the day to do it. What I want to write about today is something very unfamiliar with many people.
When we come to Christ we come because we realize that we cannot do this thing called life on our own. We need help and we need Him to save us from the death that we are owed because of our sins. If we go through our entire lives without ever coming into a relationship with Jesus then we will be destined for an eternity in hell. That's not a fun thing to think about, but it is in fact a reality.
I was taught from a very young age about the love of Jesus and about the sacrifice that He made on the cross and that He did it because of His love for me, so that I would not have to suffer eternity in hell. I was also taught that I was supposed to be good, and that I had to change the ways that I did things and that I had to continually work on myself to become the person Jesus wanted me to be. My faith in Christ, and my understanding of His promise was solely based off of earning His love and earning His affection.
I am a musician and I love playing various instruments. About 2 years ago I picked up an electric guitar for the first time, and I really enjoy the Fender Thin-line Telecaster that I play at church. It's a great guitar and it is very appealing to the eye. When we purchased the guitar I didn't know a whole lot about electric guitars or the pedals needed to play them correctly. We ended up getting a Pod XT Live floor pedal for the guitar. I know how to tweak the factory settings on the pedal, and I know how to do a few things to enhance the sound on the pedal, but I have no idea what the thing is capable of. There is so much locked inside of it, that I don't have access to, because I don't have knowledge of how to use it.
I feel like life as a Christian can be viewed in much the same way. We have this new life that God has given us through our faith in Jesus Christ and our acceptance of His sacrifice that He made on the cross, but we aren't sure about everything that is included in the new life we are given.
As I said earlier, my early life as a Christian was based solely upon works and on earning God's favor. The bible doesn't teach us that though. No one can earn their way to Jesus though. We can't ever be good enough, and we can't ever do enough good things to earn the love of Jesus. Yet, for some reason we are always trying to do things in order to change ourselves into what we are supposed to be.
In 2 Corinthians 5 Paul says in verses 17-20 "17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
The word "reconciliation" in this passage is a word that means "exchange". So what this passage is saying is, God was in Christ exchanging Himself for us. So what does this mean? If you go to another country eventually you will be forced to exchange your American currency into whatever national currency is used in that country. When you go to Israel for instance, they would exchange your American money for shekels. Now, when you hand them your dollar, does it change into shekels? Does it magically change it's substance and all of a sudden where once there was a dollar now there is a shekel? No! And you would be foolish to think that it would. What happens is you give them a dollar, and in return they give you shekels. The person will keep the money you give them and give you their form of currency.
It's the same way with the old creation. We can not change the old man into the new man! You will get tired and run down and will eventually go back to the old ways of doing things. It is impossible to live out the promises of the new man or the new soul, while walking in the old soul. God doesn't say that He was in Christ on the cross changing who we are to be more like Him. He was exchanging our old man and our old soul, for His new perfect soul. In fact in 1 John 4:17 it says that "...we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world." If we are saved and have accepted Him, then we are viewed by God exactly as He views Jesus! That's great news!
When we try to change the old soul and make it into the new soul it's like this. There was a man that went to the local garden store and bought a few bags of potting soil, some shovels, some plant food, and water hoses. He had a telephone pole on his property and he went and dug a trench around the pole. He then put down the potting soil and the fertilizer, and lastly he watered it. He continued this way for the next month or so. He would go buy fertilizer and put it around the telephone pole and he watered it every day. At the end of the month he got so frustrated and angry because the telephone pole was still a dead piece of wood sticking out of the ground. So he got a great idea, he would start praying that God would make the telephone pole sprout branches and grow leaves. So he continued this way for a few weeks. Finally he gave up and decided that God wasn't real because the telephone pole was still a telephone pole and not a tree. If you saw a person doing this, would you think he was a little loony? Yes! Yet, we try all the time to make our old soul better and keep asking God to change our old man into the new man and it will never happen!
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